Monday, February 05, 2007

Labour's Rick Barker comments on the underclass

"My own town of Hastings has undergone a dramatic transformation. There are now 312 people registered as unemployed, compared with 2,416 in January 1999. This means that for every 100 people who were unemployed in 1999, 87 now have a job!"

Note " now" have a job. Implies that 87 percent of people unemployed in 1999 "now have a job" - eight years later. So what I`d like to know is why Hastings is the only area in the country where all unemployed go straight from the dole to a job that lasts years.

In other areas beneficaries:Get short time jobs and then go back on the benefit, they go overseas, they die, they go on the sickness benefit, the DPB, to university, training, get an earning partner, go to prison, get pregnant and raise families (not always on the DPB either) their benefits get stood down and canceled, get canceled and suspended in error by WINZ staff, some are caught working and earning and their benefits get stopped for fraud. Others are not registered job seekers and their benefit is canceled. Others shift to other centres in their search for work, reducing the register for that area. Others are off the register as their earnings have abated out the benefit that week, but not necessarily the following week.

The rest get jobs, quite few in the state sector, and the Government funds more than a third of the wages for a year.

Barker is dreaming if he thinks that 87 percent of the 1999 register all currently have jobs in New Zealand. Some may well be part of the underclass in 2007. Others may be working for the Government, in fact there is probably a higher increase in Government employees since 1999 than there is a decrease in beneficiary numbers.

In other words, Barker doesn't have a clue. Woof woof. It's all hot air.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

Barker is sadly a lightweight Labour MP. oh and a minister.Doing the will of his master or should I say mistress.yeah there's a lot of them.

that's why we're in the shit waiting for a tidal wave to happen.1. Have the power outages of the past been dealt too.2. Are the prisons being built to properly deal with the increases in the future?2a. is sentencing reflecting society's wishes for harsher penalties?2b. Is parole being apllied properly?2c. Are paedophiles really getting a hard stick in sentencing?4. Do we have a well worked system for rehabilitation?5. Are we taxed just enough and the money used properly?6. Have the 6 month hosipital waiting lists eventuated.7. Are the etachers getting the numbers and resources to actually do the job?7a. is classroom disruption seriously being dealt with?7b. are children of brilliance getting a fair deal?7c. are IEP being properly worked for all kids at the other end of the scale?7d. What about the handicapped and semi or not so bad in our schools and their IEP's?8. Will the trains run on time at a cost people can afford?9. Will the price of electricity keep going up?10. Has the Labour party been honest about it's funding too?11. Does DOC actually know who owns what and are they (as prescribed by law) actually following plans for each tract of land?12. have we stopped foreigners from buying out backblocks yet?13. Will we ever get a decent return on our $1 Billion investment in Air New Zealand?14. Will Labour resind the local authority act that gives our councils absolute freedom to ignore us and spend our money as they think fit?\God I could go on and on, not to mention paintergate, speedinggate and all the others.

Yeah Barker's lightweight and doesn't know what he's talking about. Why do we have a parliament or even MP's.MikeNZ